malklavious
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Create RAID 1 without formatting original drive
I'm just about to add a 2nd Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 120 GB SATA drive into my nForce based ASUS A7N8X/Delux system. My goal is to setup a RAID 1 for data redundancy. Is there a way to setup this RAID without formatting the existing drive? Also, is there another option that will increase performance without loosing the data security? (0+1?)
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Your board probably has a promise RAID controller and it should be very easy for you to make the RAID 1 set with an existing drive. I just did that recently with a Promise fasttrack TX2000 card. Just boot into the raid bios, create a mirror set and tell it to duplicate from the source drive. Pretty simple. Also RAID 1 will give you a small boost in read performance but your write performance will suffer a little. So depending on your application it might balance out.
ASKER
It has a Silicon Image SiI3112A controller on it. Unfortunatly the documentation on SiI's page is pretty scarce.
ASKER
It took two tries, but I was able to make the RAID 1. For some reason when it copied the source drive the first time, at 97% it stopped and said the 2nd drive was not "RAID Capable". I then booted into Windows, set the drive as a Dynamic Disk as instructed in the link r-k give. After that the copy worked fine and the RAID is up and running.
One interesting side note, when looking on Silicon Image's website for tech docs, I found an interesting note. If you have a nForce mobo (like mine), make sure to run a BIOS update before installing a second SATA drive.
One interesting side note, when looking on Silicon Image's website for tech docs, I found an interesting note. If you have a nForce mobo (like mine), make sure to run a BIOS update before installing a second SATA drive.
Excellent. Thanks for the feedback.
ASKER
r-k, That is a useful link, however I'm hoping to be able to do this in the RAID configuration built into the BIOS.
I'll give it a try through the BIOS tonight and post my results.